Stacy Andrews

One of the Andrews brothers is gone. The other remains. Stacy Andrews is back?at right guard for the Eagles - the position his younger brother, Shawn Andrews, once manned for the team - even though he couldn't win the spot last year. For Andrews, though, a year makes a difference. At last year's minicamp, he didn't practice at all as he recovered from a torn anterior cruciate ligament. "Last year, the only thing I was getting was mental reps," Stacy Andrews said after minicamp.

It's been a tough week for the Andrews brothers. First, Shawn Andrews was lost for the season when he was placed on injured reserve with a recurring back injury. And now Stacy Andrews has lost the starting right-guard position. A little over a week ago, the brothers were lined up next to each other, with Shawn Andrews at right tackle. Now neither is with the first team. Eagles coach Andy Reid, during his news conference yesterday, said that he would rotate three guards - Nick Cole, Max Jean-Gilles and Stacy Andrews - at two spots for tomorrow's home opener against New Orleans.

Eagles fullback Leonard Weaver's sprained left knee doesn't appear to be all that serious, and starting right guard Stacy Andrews might make his preseason debut Thursday night against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Weaver sprained the medial collateral ligament in his left knee on the Eagles' first offensive play Thursday vs. the Indianapolis Colts. He left the game and did not return. "My leg got caught up in some traffic with some linemen and I went down," Weaver said. "It's definitely a lot better.

Eagles guard Stacy Andrews, one week after making just his second start of the season, was a healthy scratch against the Chicago Bears last night at Soldier Field. It was the first time this season that Andrews did not play, and it was an expensive decision: He's making $4.62 million this season when you add his $3 million signing bonus to his $1.62 million base salary. That means Andrews made $271,764 for a night off in the Windy City. Before last night, Andrews had been rotating at right guard with Nick Cole and Max Jean-Gilles, but offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg hinted during the practice week that the rotation system could be hurting the line's continuity.

Eighteen months after signing guard Stacy Andrews to a six-year, $38.9 million deal, the Eagles traded the offensive lineman to Seattle for a 2011 seventh-round draft pick on Saturday. That was one of handful of deals the Eagles made as they met the NFL-mandated roster limit of 53. The Eagles also obtained defensive end Antwan Barnes from Baltimore and sent linebacker Tracy White to New England. Both transactions involved future low-round draft picks. Andrews played in just 10 games for the Eagles last season, two as the starting right guard.

Eighteen months after signing guard Stacy Andrews to a six-year, $38.9 million deal, the Eagles traded the offensive lineman to Seattle for a 2011 seventh-round draft pick Saturday. Andrews played in just ten games for the Eagles last season, two as the starting right guard. He ended up earning just over $9 million from the original deal, according to a league source. That works out to $900,000 a game that the Eagles paid for Andrews' services. It's safe to say the Eagles didn't get what they bargained for when they signed Andrews as a free agent in February 2009.

Eagles guard Stacy Andrews was recently involved in a domestic dispute in which his girlfriend told police that Andrews punched her in the face, according to a report filed by police officers in Lumberton Township, Burlington County. Andrews denied the accusation yesterday. On the afternoon of Sept. 30, police received a call from a woman stating that she had been struck in the face by her boyfriend, according to the police report obtained by The Inquirer. Two Lumberton police officers arrived approximately four minutes later at the house where they were met by Brandy Box, Andrews' fianc?e.

ADDED Stacy Andrews, OL. Signed a 6-year contract as an unrestricted free agent from Cincinnati. LOST Brian Dawkins, FS. Signed a 5-year contract with Denver. Lito Sheppard, CB. Traded to the New York Jets for two draft picks. Correll Buckhalter, RB. Signed a 4-year contract with Denver. Sean Considine, S. Signed a 2-year contract with Jacksonville.

When they embraced and Shawn Andrews felt the last bit of oxygen being squeezed from his body, he figured if he was playing football and doing quite well, so should the guy who had him in a bear hug - his older brother, Stacy. "He would always squeeze me the hardest," the Eagles' right guard said. There will be plenty more opportunities for such displays of brotherly love now that Stacy Andrews is a teammate of Shawn's for the first time since they played AAU basketball together when they were in high school.

THE CAUTIOUS route the Eagles were expected to steer through free agency might have gotten jolted off course yesterday. It was easier for general manager Howie Roseman to talk about not overpaying and looking for midlevel value back when it seemed the top two safeties on the market, Buffalo's Jairus Byrd and Cleveland's T.J. Ward, would either be tagged or signed by their current teams. That was the buzz when the NFL convened for the scouting combine a few weeks back, and it seemed the most likely outcome almost right up to the point when it failed to happen, with the deadline for franchise and transition tagging passing at 4 p.m. yesterday.

The trade for DeMeco Ryans comes with a cautionary tale. You may have heard it before: The Eagles acquire an established player from another team - in this case, a former two-time Pro Bowl linebacker from Houston - and that player does not deliver upon expectations. See: Jevon Kearse and Stacy Andrews. Ryans comes with rather large expectations, although they're tempered with the fact that he is only two years removed from a ruptured Achilles tendon and that he is moving back into the middle of a 4-3 defense after a season as one of two inside linebackers in a 3-4. The Eagles say they believe that Ryans, whom they acquired from the Texans in March for a fourth-round draft pick, is no longer hindered by his injury.

DURING MUCH of the Andy Reid era, the offensive line has been an orderly kind of place, excepting the occasional anomaly, such as the great Shawn and Stacy Andrews adventure of 2009. Then last year, Reid brought in Howard Mudd as his offensive-line coach, and training camp suddenly took on a different tone. Befuddled rookies and brand-new free agents milled about, crashing into one another and nearly getting Michael Vick killed a couple of times in the chaotic preseason. Solid vets such as Jamaal Jackson, Winston Justice and Mike McGlynn, once prized by o-line-coach-turned-defensive-coordinator Juan Castillo, weren't deemed capable of starting under Mudd.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The New York Giants are hoping to keep the New Orleans Saints guessing about their left tackle for tonight's game, though the choice of a replacement for Will Beatty is a no-brainer. The Giants (6-4) are either going to move David Diehl from left guard to tackle or start Stacy Andrews for Beatty, who had surgery to repair a detached retina on Thanksgiving. Neither coach Tom Coughlin nor Diehl would say who would get the start at tackle, but it's not much of a choice.

Andy Reid shouldn't worry. Nobody is going to jump to conclusions about first-round pick Danny Watkins just because the rookie isn't ready to start at guard in Week 1 against a blitz-happy Rams defense. Nobody rational, anyway. The decision, after all, says much more about Reid than about Watkins. Two years after an ill-fated attempt to retool his offensive line, Reid is about to start this season of high expectations with the very definition of a patchwork line in front of Michael Vick.

Fifty-three is an odd number, but it's the number Eagles coach Andy Reid must get his roster to by Saturday. Usually, at this point, maybe two or three jobs are on the line, and the final preseason game would help in separating one candidate from the other. But for various reasons, as listed below, the Eagles' 53-man roster this year is far harder to predict than in recent memory. The Birds have five extra bodies heading into Thursday night's game at the New York Jets.

HE MINNESOTA Vikings have agreed to the terms of a trade with Washington for Donovan McNabb, the NFL Network reported yesterday. But there's a catch. The trade will only go through if McNabb agrees to a new contract. He is due $12.5 million this year. The fact that the Vikings drafted quarterback Christian Ponder in the first round complicates matters, in the the Vikings would already have McNabb's eventual successor in place. Noteworthy Tarvaris Jackson is in as the Seattle Seahawks' next quarterback and Matt Hasselbeck is reportedly looking elsewhere.

Howard Mudd was living, quite literally, in Leisure World when Andy Reid phoned him one January day with the hopes of luring him out of retirement. Reid's peculiar idea of naming offensive line coach Juan Castillo the Eagles' next defensive coordinator could only happen, in his words, if Mudd had agreed to take Castillo's spot only a year after calling it quits with the Colts. There was a brief feeling-out period. Mudd: "You know that I'm not going to do things like Juan did them.

It's tricky business predicting the Eagles' draft plans. Last year heading into the draft, their center was four months removed from major knee surgery, the right guard was an enigma bordering on free agent bust, and the left guard was hobbling on a bum foot. Andy Reid might as well have been walking around with a neon sign as gaudy as his draft weekend Hawaiian shirts that screamed: "No surprise here: We're drafting interior linemen!" Except they didn't. In fact, the Eagles didn't add a single offensive lineman through the draft, free agency, or trade last offseason.

Despite a number of holes on defense, the Eagles addressed the offensive line and Michael Vick's protection when they selected 26-year-old Danny Watkins of Baylor in the first round of the NFL draft. Watkins has played only tackle, but he projects as a guard in the pros, although Eagles coach Andy Reid said Thursday night that Watkins could play anywhere on the line. Reid said that the 6-foot-3, 310-pounder could step in and start immediately at either guard spot. "We felt he was as good a football player as there was in the draft," Reid said at the NovaCare Complex.